Solo

love.’
    ‘A Scottish engineer?’ Bond said. ‘So was my father, funnily enough. And my mother was Swiss,’ he added, as if the fact that they were both of mixed nationalities would form an affinity between them.
    In fact the information did seem to make her relax even more, Bond thought. That old Celtic blood tie established, the homeland noted – however fragile the connection, however meaningless – worked its temporary magic.
    ‘You don’t sound Scottish,’ he said.
    ‘Neither do you.’ She smiled. ‘I was educated in England. Cheltenham Ladies’ College, then Cambridge, then Harvard. I hardly know Scotland, to be honest.’
    Bond stubbed out his Tusker in the ashtray on her desk, his throat raw.
    ‘Did they recruit you at Cambridge?’
    ‘Yes. Then they arranged for me to go to Harvard. I think they had plans for me in America. But, because of my family connections, this was the perfect first assignment.’
    Bond was trying to calculate her age – Cambridge then Harvard, born in the war, maybe twenty-six, or twenty-seven. She was remarkably assured for one so young; but he suspected this job was going to prove harder than he had ever imagined.
    ‘I’m staying at the Excelsior,’ he said.
    ‘Yes, I do know that,’ she said with elaborate patience. ‘And Christmas is your driver.’
    ‘Ah, so you must have arranged—’
    ‘I’m here to help, Commander Bond.’ She stood up. ‘I must say it’s a great privilege to be working with you. Your reputation precedes you, even out here in the sticks.’
    ‘Please call me James, Blessing.’
    ‘I’m here to help, James,’ she repeated. ‘Shall we have dinner tonight? There’s a good Lebanese restaurant in town. We can talk through everything then.’ She walked him to the door. ‘Make our plans. I’ll pick you up at the Excelsior at seven.’

·6·
     

SYRIAN BURGUNDY-TYPE
     
    Bond had ordered malfouf – stuffed cabbage rolls – followed by shish tawook – a simple chicken kebab with salty pickles. The food was good. Bond had spent three weeks on a tedious job in Beirut in 1960 and in his endless spare time had developed a taste for Lebanese cuisine. The wine list, however, was a joke, given that he had drunk excellent Lebanese wines in Beirut – all that was on offer here was Blue Nun Riesling and a red described as ‘Syrian Burgundy-type’ – so Bond played safe and ordered the local beer, Green Star. It was something of a first for him to drink beer with dinner, but the lager was light and very cold and complemented the strong flavours of the garlic and the pickles. Blessing had a cold lentil soup and a dried-mint omelette.
    ‘You’re not a vegetarian, are you?’ Bond asked, suspiciously.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just not very hungry. Would it matter if I was?’
    ‘It might,’ Bond said, with a smile. ‘I’ve never met a vegetarian I liked, curiously. You might have been the exception, of course.’
    ‘Ha-ha,’ she remarked, drily. ‘By their food shall ye judge them.’
    ‘You’d be surprised, it’s not a bad touchstone,’ Bond said, and called for another Green Star. ‘Or so I’ve found in my experience.’
    Since he had left her office she had had her hair redone. The plaited rows had gone and it was now oiled flat back against her head almost as if it was painted on. She had a shiny transparent gloss on her lips and was wearing a black silk Nehru jacket over wide flared white cotton trousers, and had some sort of crudely beaten pewter disc hanging round her neck on a leather thong. She looked very futuristic, Bond thought, with her perfect caramel skin, the colour of milky coffee, as if she were an extra from a science-fiction film.
    The restaurant was in downtown Sinsikrou, near to the law courts and the barracks. It had a deliberately modest facade with a flickering neon sign that bluntly read ‘El Kebab – Best Lebanon’, but the first-floor dining room was air-conditioned and there were white linen cloths on the tables and waiters in velvet waistcoats and tasselled tarbooshes. Bond had spotted several high-ranking soldiers and also some of the journalists who’d been at the briefing earlier that day. El Kebab was obviously the only place in town.
    They chatted idly as they ate, keeping off the subject of their business with each other – the tables were close and it would be easy to overhear or eavesdrop. Blessing told him more about the civil war and its origins from her perspective. Being